City Council committee approves new SPD chief appointment

LYNSI BURTO, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By LYNSI BURTON, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Updated 5:29 pm, Thursday, June 12, 2014

Former Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole speaks to reporters after she was announced as the nominee for Seattle Police Chief. Photographed on Monday, May 19, 2014 at Seattle City Hall. (Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com)
Photo: SEATTLEPI.COM

Seattle residents who spoke at these meetings were alternately brimming with excitement about O'Toole's appointment and skeptical that she would do anything to change a police culture viewed to be racially biased, heavy-handed with physical force and resistant to reform.

Various concerns voiced by residents included the prevalence of small crimes in areas such as Pioneer Square and the International District and alleged civil rights violations committed by police officers.

O'Toole and residents alike have also criticized the department for being "behind the times" in technology.

Since her May 19 nomination by Mayor Ed Murray, O'Toole has emphasized her four main goals for the Seattle Police Department: restoring public trust, restoring pride and professionalism among officers, addressing neighborhood crimes and quality of life issues, and promoting "best business practices" -- in other words, operating as efficiently and effectively as possible.

O'Toole has also mentioned that her first priority will be to implement the federally mandated reforms to which the city agreed in 2012, which will take another few years to put in place.

Another policing strategy she seeks to implement in the city is a "bottom-up" approach based on the needs of individual neighborhoods.

"We need to get out there and spend as much time in the community as possible and that includes me," O'Toole said at Thursday's committee hearing, echoing sentiments expressed in the past. "We're spending taxpayers' money and we have to do that as effectively as possible."

Controversy and tragedy have cropped up in the police department and in the city in the weeks since O'Toole was nominated. More than 100 police officers filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice and the city, alleging lack of fairness and concern for safety in new use of force policies; a double homicide in the Leschi neighborhood remains unsolved; and a 19-year-old Seattle Pacific University student was killed last week when an aspiring mass shooter set foot on the campus.

That's on top of the several leadership shake-ups in recent years, including one chief and two interim chiefs in the past 13 months.

Regardless, city councilmembers have expressed optimism at the prospect of a police department helmed by O'Toole.

"You're going to be a breath of fresh air," Councilman Tim Burgess, himself a Seattle police officer from the 1970s, told O'Toole at a public hearing last week.